(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fire-resistant panel, and more particularly, to a fire-resistant panel that can be used in various applications such as for materials for walls of subway stations, washrooms and kitchens, building interior or exterior materials for ceilings and floors, floor of passenger cars, interior materials, and for furniture, the fire-resistant panel having excellent fire-resistance and a low dimensional change. The present invention also relates to a fire-resistant decorative panel using the fire-resistant panel.
(b) Description of the Related Art
A common melamine-based decorative plate is generally formed by pressing a plurality of layers consisting of a surface protective layer and a decoration layer both impregnated by a melamine resin, and a core layer impregnated by a phenol resin onto kraft paper, using a multi-stage press at an elevated temperature under a high pressure. However, these decorative plates have drawbacks of being thermally weak due to their high content of resins and pulp layers.
Therefore, in order to meet the requirement of fire-resistance for materials used as building interior and exterior materials, furniture, and the like, ground stone or processed metals are used, and alternately, tiles made of ceramics or porcelain are attached to the surface. Though these materials have good durability and fire-resistance, they have drawbacks of a high manufacturing cost, a heavy weight, and low workability; and furthermore there is limitation for their use as colorful decoration.
In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, fire-resistant melamine-based decorative materials comprising a specific inorganic compound in their core-material layer have been proposed, examples of which can be found in Japanese Patent Pub. Nos. 03-253342 (FIG. 1), 11-268186 (FIG. 2), 10-305527 (FIGS. 2 and 3), 10-305525 (FIGS. 2 and 3), etc. These decorative panels have a multi-layered configuration consisting of, from top to bottom, a sheet for a decorative layer using a patterned substrate and a melamine resin, a basic material layer made by blending an inorganic filler such as a nonwoven glass fabric and aluminum hydroxide with a melamine resin or a phenol resin and by impregnating or coating, a reinforcing layer made by blending and impregnating a nonwoven glass fabric with a melamine resin or a phenol resin, another basic material layer and another decorative layer. These layers are molded with a multi-stage press at a high temperature under a high pressure.
However, although such conventional fire-resistant melamine-based decorative panels exhibit improved fire-resistance compared with common melamine-based decorative panels, there are still problems in that their fire-resistance and dimensional stability are insufficient because a large amount of resin is used in order to improve strength and processability of the decorative panels and their manufacturing cost is increased due to the use of inorganic filler such as aluminum hydroxide.